Actually it isn’t pitch black in Anchorage for 18 hours a day. There’s a miracle of the polar regions known as blue light. The Norwegians call it tussmørket, and in Finland it’s called kaamos — the blue hour. They use it in promoting winter tourism. And even in New Hampshire I’ve noticed this on clear winter days, though it doesn’t last for a full hour at our latitude.

Here in Anchorage at 61 degrees, on the same line that curves around to Oslo, blue light lasts for much longer than an hour. Right now it’s starting at about 8:15am, this wonderful glowing blue that reaches all the way to the zenith when you look East. It grows more and more luminous and the whole world feels blue, but not with any of the modern connotations of blue — not sad, but alive; and it has nothing to do with electronic blue light that somehow has become the internet fad, with all of these companies trying to sell us glasses to combat the effects of screen light on our eyes. No. This is polar blue that is celestial and beautiful.

It’s worth going out at below zero to experience it. Because it’s subtle enough that you can’t fully experience it from the inside looking out a window. And so I’ve been going out walking at 8am, my head turned to the East. As I walk I begin to see a band of rose light just above the white Chugach peaks, Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn,” pushing up from under the blue. And over the next hour the rose becomes infused with gold, going from peach to deep gold, as we tilt a little closer to the sun.

And as the sky over the mountains becomes more and more gold, with the luminous blue still reaching to the zenith, the western mountains to my right begin to tinge rose. Mount Susitna, closest to Anchorage, The Sleeping Lady who truly does look like a maiden asleep on her back with the trailing more distant Alaska Range as her hair, she begins to blush pink. And to the north, 20,000 foot Denali emerges, pink, from the dark of night. And some minutes later the gray inlet water, in between the ice floes, turns pink.

By now I’m done my walk, back in my apartment looking out my north windows, and it’s 10:30am and the sun is rising in the southeast, while downtown Anchorage is blocked by the Chugach range to the east and southeast so it won’t get sunlight until about 11. Instead I watch the first gold-rose light touch the bluffs across the inlet from Anchorage. Where I am is still in shadow but I’m glad the sun is shining on someone!

This has happened to me before — arriving in Anchorage in December from the East coast, I am awake and up by 4am Alaska time because of the time change (and that’s sleeping late for me! Many times I haven’t been able to sleep past 3am that first day or two) and because Alaska’s time zones were compressed in the 1980s to artificially keep the state not quite so far behind the rest of the country, in December the sun doesn’t rise above the Chugach mountain range until after 10am. 10:01am today to be exact. And it sets at 3:43pm. But in the old days, the 1970s when I was in high school here, in mid December the sun set at 2:30pm just as school got out. So we kids were pretty used to going to school in the dark and going home in the dark. I don’t remember minding it at all; it was just a fact of life.

As an adult who’s used to sunrise on the East coast at around 7:30 or 8am even in the winter, and some warmth to the sun, even in January, I’m not sure I could live here through the winter anymore.

But I do love the dark. Just maybe not quite this much dark.

My favorite thing to do when I get up in the pitch dark is to light some candles. There is something so soft, so comforting in flickering candlelight surrounded by immense dark. It’s cheering and hopeful. In December, with Christmas coming, it makes perfect sense to put lighted candles in windows, or outdoor lanterns or maybe a string of little white lights along the yard. Cheerful and hopeful. Some people up here in Alaska take it a bit far with some pretty elaborate outdoor lighting displays, but hey, I can’t fault them in the least!

I have to laugh, remembering a Christmas trip up to Anchorage in the mid 1990s when our daughters were still young. We were all awake and having breakfast by 4am and then we waited and waited and waited for it to get light. My youngest asked, “Mom, does the sun ever come up here?” At least it was snowy then, as it is now, and the blanket of white snow makes it not quite so dark after all. And we had brought our headlamps which shone soft white light on the snow as we went for an early morning walk.

We had another bear come visit us a couple of weeks ago. He (we figure it was a year old male) sauntered through my daughter and son in law’s yard, very close to their nine year old son, just looking curious, and they texted me that he was headed my way. It was nearly dark, and I went out on my deck, looking around either side of the house. No bear. I went back to the north side of the deck for another look, and just before I turned away in disappointment, a blackness deeper than approaching night begin to emerge from under the crabapple tree in our backyard, only about fifteen feet from the deck. And then an adolescent black bear stepped out onto the grass and looked up at me.

Black bears are black beyond black. When I see one, I’m always surprised by this. And the brown around their muzzles is such a soft contrast.

He didn’t look in the least big afraid of me. He just looked curious. He even took another step forward. I began talking to him to make sure he knew I was a human that he should be wary of, but he didn’t seem at all wary, just curious.

This happened to me one other time in the deep woods about a mile from our house, when I came near to a very young coyote. He was following his mother who was nose down, very intent on a scent. (Our Eastern coyotes are very big and bushy and look a bit like wolves, and I’ve heard that they are descended from Canadian wolves.) I had a dog with me but I had already put her on a leash. We all saw each other at the same second, except the mother, thank God, who was still on the scent––the young coyote stopped and stared at us, completely unafraid, and I actually almost heard it think, “What’s that? Is it something fun?” My dog was silent, but she strained toward the young coyote as it took a step toward us and it almost seemed as if they wanted to play with each other. But I realized the mother would not have cared for that! So I clapped my hands just once, and instantly both coyotes disappeared, as they have a way of doing in our woods when they cross paths with us. They are masters at vanishing into thin air.

And here was this curious bear in my yard. Part of me wished that I could quietly slip down the steps and go to him and see what he would do. Would he let me put a hand into his deep, soft fur? But the rational part of me knew that any bear in my neighborhood should not get too used to humans; it would be a death sentence for the bear. Some day he might come too close to a child and one of my neighbors would be quick to grab a rifle and shoot him. One friend’s husband did shoot a bear in the woods not far from my house and its head and beautiful fur is on display on the trophy wall of his home. And there was no terrified child or any threatened creature involved––he just wanted a bear on his wall.

How could anyone kill such a creature? So as this bear and I looked at each other, I clapped my hands several times, loudly, and said, “Okay, it’s time for to you to go home, Bear. Back to your woods.” And he took another second, and then he slowly, clumsily, turned on his haunches, slipped back under the crabapple and slowly trotted for the woods. A part of me would have liked to have followed him. But I want him to be safe.

And this reminds me of my favorite version of the woman-who-married-the-bear story, told by a Nishga storyteller, the one that begins, “The princess of the tribe is picking salmonberries…” She’s young, she’s a bit stuck up, and the bears teach her a lesson, but also give her indescribable gifts.